


Unexpected Consequences of Unexpected Betrayal

by CypherZero



Series: Esper Enhanced AU [1]
Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Explicit Language, Gen, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24631813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypherZero/pseuds/CypherZero
Summary: She stepped out of the Room and groggily turned her head to see the results screen, eyes scanning the names, words, and numbers, but she didn’t consciously absorb the information until she reached the fifth column.Betray+0She wondered why the expected feeling of vindication was absent.--Alice's Route in a slightly altered Ambidex Game. Slight spoilers for Virtue's Last Reward.
Relationships: Implied Alice/Clover
Series: Esper Enhanced AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780915
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Unexpected Consequences of Unexpected Betrayal

**Author's Note:**

> This fic sets precedent for an AU I'm planning on writing in the very near future. A couple characters read as OOC; this is intentional.

She leaned against the voting terminal and forced herself to take slow, steady breaths rather than the rapid, desperate gasps that her body wanted to heave. The robotic voice chimed out in a pleasant female tone and drove a railroad spike through her aching head. Her ears rang, her eyes swam, and her muscles protested their use so soon after waking from anesthesia, but if she remained in the AB Room much longer she could get locked in, and her bracelet would inject the Soporil, so she should probably move just a little bit more.

She stepped out of the Room and groggily turned her head to see the results screen, eyes scanning the names, words, and numbers, but she didn’t consciously absorb the information until she reached the fifth column.

_Betray_

_+0_

She wondered why the expected feeling of vindication was absent.

“Alice?!”

Her name echoed as an exclamation from two separate voices, sending another painful throb to her temples.

One was from Luna, tone predominantly shocked, yet accompanied by something else that confused Alice: dawning comprehension. What did Alice’s presence suddenly clear up for the nurse?

The second was from Clover, joyous and perplexed in equal measure, walking over to her now. Her friend and coworker was happy to see her, but was likely confused as to why she was seeing her _here_. Understandable, given that the last state she was seen in was unconscious in a hospital bed. Her training had given her resistance to anesthesia, though, and Clover knew this; she probably just needed to overcome her shock and remember.

She had expected Sigma’s voice to be a part of that chorus, but he hadn’t spoken up. Didn’t seem to be in evidence at all, actually; he was missing from the room. Did Luna herself betray her? It didn’t seem in character… No, the way she fidgeted, nervously toying with her bluebird necklace, and kept directing her gaze behind Alice to the cyan door told a different story; Sigma had likely left immediately after voting.

Clover’s sudden hug distracted her from her musings. Her head still felt muddy, and she felt the need to aim her _whole_ attention on a single target. Forget multitasking, looks like her ability to even simply _focus_ on more than one thing was shot to hell until her head cleared.

“Alice! You’re up! I was so worried!”

“A little softer, please, you know drugs like that give me a killer headache.” She loved Clover dearly, but her pep and enthusiasm was _loud_ and sent needles through her skull. “But yes, I woke up just a bit ago. Just in time to vote, as well.”

Clover’s eyes darted to the right, to the results screen, and unconsciously expressed her discomfort by biting her lip. A nervous habit she hadn’t been successfully trained out of.

“Just in time to vote… betray?”

“Yes! And just as well, seeing how I was betrayed in turn.” Alice’s own eyes briefly shot to the left, looking for something to undercut Clover’s expected rebuttal; morality was also something that training hadn’t removed. Wow, _all six_ columns had Betray written, how _cutthroat_ . “I don’t know why you’re getting on me about this, _you_ voted to betray too.”

“ _Yeah_ , but those circumstances were _totally_ different! My opponents were K, who has 6 BP, and Quark, who isn’t here to be an adorable little shoulder angel. Combine that with the fact that we just found a second bomb—” What? _Another_ bomb? “—and it’s obvious that K’s survival instincts would kick it into high gear! I can’t even be mad about that. But with _you,_ your opponents were Luna, who I’m not entirely certain is psychologically capable of hurting a _fly_ , let alone one of her bedridden _patients_ , and Sigma, who is at 1 BP, because _you_ already betrayed him once this game!”

Those were… very good points. Uncomfortably so. And they were made in a moralistic yet _affirmative_ tone that made it hard for Alice to focus on the argument instead of on the girl she was arguing with. She needed a reprieve.

“What if you were wrong?”

“What?”

“About K. What if he voted Ally and you got three points. Would you have opened the Number Nine Door?”

“No, I wouldn’t have left _you_ . Stop trying to distract me.” Well, _that_ backfired. Pleasantly, it was a pleasant backfire, and she could feel the heat rushing to her face. But still.

“Well, why aren’t you more upset about Phi and Dio, then? They both tried to betray someone at 1 BP, aren’t you mad at them?”

“Maybe at Dio, a little. I mean, yeah, Phi could’ve gotten Tenmyouji killed, but she herself only has 1 BP, and it’s not like I can fault her for not being _stupid_ . Dio’s an amoral, opportunistic _douchebag_ , and his partner was busy in the infirmary, watching over Quark.”

‘And you,’ was left unsaid, yet lingered heavily in the air between them. She wasn’t entirely sure where the opinion of Dio came from, since an “amoral, opportunistic douchebag” wouldn’t have allied with Luna in the first round, even with an “adorable little shoulder angel,” but she chalked the opinion (and both descriptions of character) up to esper-given intuition. Alice saw her friend’s face twist into a familiar self-righteous shape, and prepared herself for another lecture.

But then something equally familiar came over Clover, expressed through minute muscle twitches, quickened breaths, and rapidly darting eye movements. _Shit_.

“Get away!”

Speaking of esper-given intuition.

Alice didn’t resist as Clover stepped through her legs and grabbed her hips in the same motion, twisting them both away from the downward plunge of a blade. Nor did she resist the palm thrust that impacted her abdomen, pushing her away from the following side stab, and giving Clover the force needed to roll backwards underneath it. The sudden activity cleared her head, allowing her to split her focus between the _beautifully_ executed spring kick, the box cutter that flew through the air, and the fact that it was _Sigma_ who initiated the conflict.

She allowed herself to be flustered, both by the feat of acrobatics that Clover used to cartwheel from her handstand and catch the falling knife before it hit the ground where Sigma could reclaim it, and by the assertive tone she took on to question the old man who had apparently gone _completely insane,_ while she backed up to join the other four inhabitants of Warehouse A.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?!”

There was no hesitance within Sigma as he responded. Not in his face, twisted into a snarl. Nor in his stance, poised to leap forward. Nor in his voice, dripping in venom and fury and _promise_ , a promise to make someone _suffer_.

“Returning the favor.”

They started to fight, and Alice waited patiently for Clover to win. She had something close to combat precognition like in comic books; when in a heightened state of danger, such as a surprisingly fit old man threatening bodily harm at the _least_ , she could perceive her opponent’s hostility, and their next move made to hurt her would be broadcasted, which allowed her to react to their actions before they had even started to make it. It made her quite the devastating foe.

Except… She wasn’t winning.

Granted, she wasn’t _losing_ , either. Sigma and Clover were dancing around each other, her dodging massive punches with graceful moves, him avoiding the box knife she had taken from him by the barest degrees with unnatural twitches.

Wait. Unnatural muscle twitches allowing him to dodge a deadly weapon in the hands of a trained combat agent while he himself had no apparent training.

Was he…?

Someone tapped on her shoulder, and she twisted her head to see Dio standing next to her. Off to the side, she could see Phi looking at the fight unblinkingly, K watching on with a hand on his chin, and Luna, hands still toying with the necklace.

“Hey uh, Alice? The hell’s going on here?”

Technically, the answer to that question was classified information, but in reality, two participants of their death game (now with added bombs!) started to clash (to the death?) directly after a round of death game voting.

Still. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t think _anything_ is crazier than what I’m seeing now.”

“Clover is psychic and I think Sigma is as well.”

Dio opened his mouth, raising his finger like he had a point he wanted to make, then dropped it and hummed. “I stand corrected.”

“What do you mean psychic?” Phi didn’t look at Alice as she queried her, eyes still locked on the combatting pair.

“Well, according to Clover, she has abilities focused on ‘communication.’ Sending and receiving messages.”

Surprisingly, it was K who responded next. “Sending and receiving through the morphogenetic field?”

“What, you know this sci-fi bullshit but not your first name?” Unsurprisingly, it was Dio who snarked back. Luckily, Phi was still focused on the conversation.

“So, she’s sort of hearing what Sigma’s gonna do before he does it right now?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“And you suspect that Sigma is doing the same thing?”

“Well, he would have to be. No one with the _same_ amount of training as her can last this long against Clover, let alone someone with as little training as Sigma must have.”

“Um…” Oh, it seemed Luna had found her voice. “…What is it that makes you think Sigma doesn’t have much training, Alice?”

Besides the fact that she was certified to see stuff like that? “Look at how he’s fighting. The hesitation in every move he makes, the little twitches. It’s like he wants to make one move, but second guesses himself at every turn and does something different instead. It’s _sloppy_.”

“Twitching…” Phi mutters, just barely loud enough for you to catch it, her teeth coming down to worry her bottom lip.

“And uh,” Dio pops back into the conversation, “just what kind of training does Clover have, exactly?”

“Classified.”

“What, she some kind of fuckin’ secret agent or something?”

“Hey.” Phi finally tears her gaze away from the fight to direct her attention to Alice. “Out of curiosity, is this situation boosting Clover’s abilities? This danger?”

Lord, how bright _was_ this girl? “Yes…”

“And if it’s boosting Clover, then it must be boosting Sigma as well?”

“Assumably.”

“Okay…” Slowly, Phi turns her gaze away from Alice back to the fight. “I think I have it figured out…”

“Oh yeah?” Dio snidely cuts in. “Feel free to share with the class, girlie.”

To her credit, Phi doesn’t even react to the tone. Through apathy or inattention, Alice isn’t wholly sure. “Sigma isn’t on the same psychic level as Clover. He’s _stronger_.”

“ _What?!_ ” Alice can’t maintain the cool tone she’d been keeping, can’t hide her shock at Phi’s statement, given with a hundred percent confidence.

“According to you, Clover has the ability to receive psychic messages through this morpho-whatever thing. She’s reading Sigma’s actions before he can even make them.”

“Yes, exactly!”

“Well, that’s not what Sigma’s doing.”

“And what the _hell_ is he doing?”

“Earlier today, during the first AB game, Sigma said he saw an image of a bomb exploding. This was _before_ we had found the bomb in the crew quarters. I think he caught a glimpse of the future.”

“And if his powers get heightened by being in immediate danger, that means he’s seeing and reacting to glimpses of the future… But if that’s the case, why hasn’t he won yet? Why hasn’t Clover reacted to his reactions properly and put him down yet? Why the stalemate?”

It was Luna who picked up the discussion, now. “If I can ask, Alice, has Clover ever experienced extreme emotions while using her abilities? Perhaps feelings of betrayal or anger?”

Alice quickly thought back to an early training session Clover had, a joint session with her brother, Light. They were communicating from across the facility when the higher-ups had triggered a false intruder alarm and drugged Light with anaesthesia suddenly.

“Yes…”

“And how did she react?”

Clover had torn through the false intruders on her way through the facility, frantically looking for her brother, and had, while armed with nothing but a scalpel, caused three life-threatening injuries, and had tortured a man that had been left in Light’s assigned room into telling her that the intrusion was part of the training exercise.

“…Poorly.”

“Hm.” Luna shot a quick glance behind her before turning back to the fight. “Perhaps you should watch the fight a little more closely. Pay attention to how Clover is moving, specifically.”

Alice raised an eyebrow at the nurse, but dutifully watched Clover and Sigma clash with each other. She watched Sigma advance aggressively, fists snapping out clumsily but quickly. She watched Clover duck and weave between blows as she slashed at her opponent back and forth, sending him stumbling backwards.

She watched, but…

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” Luna sighed quietly, but K made a noise of understanding, so Alice turned to him. “You got it, right? What am I missing?”

His head turned to regard her, but kept a finger up and pointed at the melee. “Forgive me if I am mistaken, but I do not believe that Clover would have been trained to use only one hundred and twenty degrees of motion to subdue an opponent.”

Her hair whipped behind her as her head whirled to stare at Clover. The pinkette twirled beautifully away from a jab, and was positioned on Sigma’s left side. Normally, a trained agent would use the positioning to get behind their opponent, but Clover instead pushed off the foot she landed on, thrusting her knife at Sigma’s throat, forcing him to backpedal away.

It certainly went against subdual procedure… 

“What is she _doing…_?”

“Sigma does not seem to be fighting against Clover,” K continued. “Rather, he sees her as an obstacle to overcome in order to reach his true objective.”

…On a whim, Alice took three steps to her left, closer toward Luna and Phi. And, while it was subtle, and almost lost in the chaos of his battle, Sigma had definitely turned to match her movements.

Clover’s actions went against the notion of subdual…

 _“Has Clover ever experienced strong emotions while using her powers? Perhaps feelings of anger and betrayal?_ _  
_ _…And how did she react?”_

…but it was _perfect_ for protective duty.

“He was voting to ally,” Luna remarked. “His hand went high, to press the corresponding button. But then he gasped, and spasmed. His fingers pressed the betray button, and he grabbed at his bracelet. He was breathing heavily. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but if what Phi said about him was true…”

Suddenly, what Sigma had said when Clover had asked what he was doing made perfect sense. ‘Returning the favor,’ huh?

She had really… killed him…

Off to the side, the yellow door hissed open, and a voice echoed throughout the warehouse. “Hey, what happened—”

Alice looked over to see that Tenmyouji had entered the warehouse, but paused once he caught sight of the fighting psychics. Something entered his eyes, a look he only got when he looked at Quark, but it quickly fled in favor of a more easily identifiable emotion: anger. He stalked over to Sigma and Clover with purpose, jaw set and fists clenched, and every so often, a full body twitch would come over him, like he wanted to do _something_ , but he… changed his mind at the last second…

Oh for God’s sake, was Tenmyouji psychic too?

He marched with purpose without changing his pace until he came side to side with Phi. Then, without looking at each other for any kind of signal, both of them broke into a dash. Tenmyouji sprinted up to Sigma, diverting his next punch off to the side, while Phi came up and grabbed Clover by her hip and pushed her away. In the same movement, with the opposite hand, she grabbed onto Tenmyouji’s shoulder and used it to boost herself up, and the old man ducked in time for her to deliver a powerful kick to Sigma’s face.

He collapsed into a heap, and Phi landed in a crouch, checking over his vitals. Tenmyouji, meanwhile, panted heavily, bent over with his hands on his knees. Then, standing upright, he turned to address the rest of the room.

“Would someone like to explain just what the _hell_ is going on?”

**Author's Note:**

> The cornerstone of this AU is that espers are more powerful than shown in canon Zero Escape. The stronger an esper is, though, the less stable their hold on reality is, and they're more easily influenced by their emotions. Coming off a near-death experience is likely to inspire feelings of fear and anger, along with a desire for revenge, which I used to drive Sigma. He's new to these powers, at this point, and this is the only choice in VLR that can immediately kill him, meaning it hits him harder and sways him easier.
> 
> I didn't plan on writing a second part to this work, in my mind it plays out similar to canon once Sigma wakes up and calms down enough to listen to Alice. He isn't all that different, just less rational.


End file.
